There’s way too much going on right now for me to really focus on any one country this week. The aftermath of the fall of the Nepal government has, somewhat surprisingly, reverberated around the world, and not only in countries that are enemies to the West as you’d expect; for example, Morocco’s government battle fiercely with Egypt’s and Jordan’s to be first in line to lick the dogshit off the boots of Zionists, and yet Morocco is currently embroiled in a large protest wave based primarily around a youth unemployment crisis (though their population is also remarkably pro-Palestinian, which generates additional friction). We’re also seeing similar protests in Madagascar, Peru, and Paraguay, and perhaps more will come. I’m personally fairly doubtful in the potential for meaningful economic results from these protests (the current imperialist system seems too deeply embedded for a movement that isn’t explicitly communist and anti-imperialist to alter conditions), but it is quite possible for new political results at least.
Outside of the developing world, it appears that the unpopularity of western leaders, such as in the UK, France, and Italy, is creating new levels of unrest. In Britain, the political system has become so utterly moribund that even the artificial democracy of a two-party system (more-or-less; the Lib Dems do exist I suppose) no longer suffices, with both Conservatives and Labour gradually sinking. The Reform party appears like it may become the new standard-bearer of the capitalists and petit-bourgeois - that is, the historical wellspring of fascism - and the Left Party (whatever name they eventually choose) may or may not rise to meet the occasion. In France, they’re on their fifth Prime Minister in two years, after Lecornu lasted about a month, attempting the liberal classic: promising change, and then appointing the exact same people who have ruled for the last few decades. And pro-Palestinian protests and general strikes have erupted in Italy, in defiance of their rightwing government under Meloni.
While there’s plenty of other events (e.g. continuing aggression against Venezuela that might soon erupt into a war) it would be remise of me not to mention the very much ongoing events vis-a-vis Palestine and a potential peace deal there, seemingly supported to some degree by Trump. It could be legitimate, and it could be some big act (very likely the latter, IMO). Both Trump and Netanyahu seem to believe that they’re very talented political masterminds, producing manoeuvres and feints that would make Machiavelli blush. Nothing could be further from the truth, and I trust the militant organizations inside Palestine to outplay these American failsons. Hamas and similar groups are not nearly as gullible as the Iranian reformist faction - though few people are!
Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
I don’t think so. They’re exceedingly competent. Just not as it pertains to domestic Burger Reich affairs.
Dunno about that. They certainly write long comments about Chinese economics, but I wouldn’t say they’re necessarily accurate. Talking about Mamdani’s “power level” seemingly unironically doesn’t exactly improve my opinion of their other posts.
that’s why it feels so off. One comment will be a wall of text about Chinese fiscal policy that’s well cited and then the next is like a snarky shitlib comment from twitter in 2017
I really appreciate their challenging and often educational views, but like I remember the unironic „dark brandon“ 36353D chessmaster analysis and ngl it diminishes the „credibility“ of their analyses entire.
I’m mostly playing around in this comment thread, but just to clarify: “Dark Brandon” won the gamble, chessmaster or not. Intentionally or not.
Hiking the rates in 2022 should have been the end of dollar hegemony if his enemies were even halfway serious or competent about it. For once in a very long time, it exposed the weakness of the American financial system during the high inflation caused by the Ukraine war and exacerbated by the Covid supply chain disruption.
Dark Brandon correctly gambled that China would not be willing to decouple from the US back then, and he was correct. Maybe it was just luck, but he won the big bet. That rare window of opportunity is now closed and we don’t know when there will be a chance like this anymore. Maybe the next financial crisis but that could be years from now.
Wouldn’t be the next financial crisis be rather soon since the whole AI bubble is about to burst?
I will admit I am not an expert in the whole AI crap so I am not competent enough to judge how this is going to play out.
Varoufakis has made intriguing point about the US transitioning into “cloud capitalism” aka some form of technofeudalism and I’ve been trying to read up his works to better educate myself.
I think Varoufakis has a lot of good insights, but tends to exaggerate a bit for attention. (Attention on himself but also on the issues.) He’s one of those figures that overstates the novelty and understates the continuity. But he is useful in highlighting his issues and drawing connections between issues.
True. There is something to learn from him though, even though not everyone knows everything. For example I really like Michael Hudson’s work and he has a very strong influence on my thinking, but even I have to admit some of the stuff he said (especially regarding China) is more on the fantastical side (i.e. they’re not wrong, but requires everything to line up perfectly to happen, if that makes sense).
“Is about to burst” could be soon could be later. It’s hard to say
Another user here once said that even reading a a Michael Roberts blog post is equivalent to getting a phd in economics just to be able to discuss shit.
I’m sorry but given this level of engagement here its no wonder xhs gets to roleplay as both a CN “ground news reporter” and econ expert. Very few people are actualy interested, I’m not calling anyone out but in general, nobody actualy cares about Marxist economics which is why IMO someone like him can sometimes literaly copy paste recycled mainstream garbage e.g monetary theory, mainstream policy, keynesianism, MMT(all garbage anti-Marxism) and pass it off as what “China needs to do” without ever actualy quoting an actual Marxist(Chinese or western) or do so very sparingly. Don’t get me wrong I think his heart is in the right place, its not malice, but its also not correct at all.
I do not know what competent means here I ought to think it should be more than regurgitating mainstream shit. Like how you can tune in to some Youtube CGTN “business” shit right now and hear the same stuff he talks about. Like clearly China isn’t doing socialism and its not realy on a path anymore(IMO) and its why the cracks are showing and instead of proposing taking a rifle and pointing at the capitalist leadership and influence among the CPC they rather daydream about monetary policy giving money to the poor(social democracy) while ignoring this is not a long term solution etc…
Be more respectful of fellow posters here.
Please explain how any of what I said is not compatible with Marxism?
I have said before that Michael Roberts’s problem with MMT is that he still think in terms of fixed exchange rate regime, and for reasons I don’t understand, unwilling to learn how to think in floating exchange currency mechanisms. All of his critiques against MMT would be moot the moment he starts thinking in how the currencies can simply float.
This is also the problem with Keynes, who, to be fair, lived in a world where gold standard was dominant. The Keynesians could not solve the wage-price spiral problem, which directly led to Thatcherism and Reaganism aka neoliberalism after the 1970s. This is a fact.
Only Stalin figured out that the Soviet ruble could be decoupled from gold when most of the world was still stuck to gold standard, and through a series of credit reform, was able to finance the development of the post-civil war USSR and rapidly industrialized the country without the dreaded inflation problem. This is also a fact.
I have said many times before that the major influence of my thinking came from Prof. Jia Genliang who is a actually a well respected political economist (aka what Marxist economist is called in China) from People’s University.
His books, the Great Internal Circulation (2020) discussed the US-China trade war and why the Internal Circulation aka domestic consumption economy has to supplant export-oriented economy (External Circulation) in order for China to reduce its reliance on the US economy, and MMT in China (2023) discussed how the monetary system works in China and its limitations from not allowing the government to drive up spending deficit.
Yeah please tell me where on the Chinese mainstream news outlet talks about government driving up deficit spending to resolve the domestic consumption problem.
are either of these in english?
Unfortunately no. It would have made my life a lot easier to just quote some stuff from there. I have to do my own translation which is very tiring!
i don’t follow the thread week to week closely enough so sry if you’ve posted them b4 could you point to a good english MMT book that informs your analysis? i’m at the tail end of a fiction book and want something informative
“Why don’t people take my advice of overthrowing the CPC seriously”
“why don’t those Chinese listen to me when I tell them to kill themselves”
Average ultra take which is tolerated and accepted on hexbear
Love to advocate overthrowing a party that has near universal support within a region of the world where people caught with guns get executed
a. That’s fiscal policy
b. I’m certain they aren’t for giving one-off stimmies
c. Calling for a wage floor and loose full employment is a basic policy many Marxist economists advocate for.
I absolutely agree that the biggest bane of contemporary Marxism has been the utter negligence of the political economy, even though Marx wrote almost exclusively on it. Now, with the west co-opting discourse on Marxism and moving it solely to the softest of social sciences, they’ve been able to silence the opposition and even proclaim unscientific trite such as the STV the orthodox position. You will scarcely find even contemporary Marxists accept the LTV, even though the theory of exploitation literally rests fundamentally on it!
Despite all that however, it’s not impossible to agree with Keynes and the MMT crowd on macroeconomic issues especially. And I somewhat agree that what China is doing can hardly be called socialism. It’s more like just the NEP, capitalist economy with a socialist state overseeing it. Still however, we don’t have a better option that China right now. They’ve been pretty clear in at least dealing with however wants to do trade, which is certainly a good thing for future movements of ours that will hopefully take over.